With all the talk about Plex Cloud and removing the need for a Plex Media Server in the home. I started thinking how useful Plex Cloud would be as an archive/secondary server for some setups rather than replacing the server component entirely, depending on how you look at it.
When I first saw Plex Cloud, I thought, wow that’s pretty cool, no more maintenance of a Plex Media Server in the home, but several things brought me back to down to earth for now:
You’ll need both a good down and uplink speed, bearing in mind most ISPs usually operate on a 10:1 ratio for upload.
Getting terabytes worth of existing data into the cloud would not be fun for an existing media collection.
Streaming would now entirely depend on the broadband speed, no longer could you leverage the local network for fast access.
I figured, for your smaller home media server setups, at some point you will probably max out your TB capacity, whether that is due to cost, physical disk space capacity, no more space to mirror/backup or otherwise. For example, I’ve calculated that based on my current hardware/setup 30 TB storage is probably the max limit, currently I’m just over 1/3 of that, but to sustain this long-term and without becoming a post on reddit as a data hoarder, Plex Cloud would allow for pretty much unlimited storage, which can be leveraged to perhaps move older media to archive and keep a home server with the new content without worrying about space as much. Removing the need to perhaps continuing buying new HDD or upgrading hardware to facilitate this requirement, if you operate a policy say, media older than 1 year goes to the archive (Plex Cloud) as a basic example.
The idea being is you’ll still technically be able to access the media at any time, just switching between two servers. Obviously there is the internet speed factor an the additional cost of Amazon Drive to consider here, but using it as an archive negates the speed issue a bit.
While your point is valid for some advanced Plex users out there, it’s too early to talk about any new features for Plex Cloud while it’s just announced and in its early beta stage.
Currently, Plex Cloud acts as a separate Plex Media Sever instance, doubling your playback options. Advanced Plex users usually know how to micromanage their multimedia and have a habit of doing so on a regular basis, and “dummies” like me tend to dump their entire media library to the cloud and forget about it.
I suggest you to copy/paste this post to the Feature Request sub-forum once Plex Cloud is live.
Hello. While I’m aware its very early days for this, I was more interested in seeing what other users thought of the idea really. The functionality itself as is, even in early beta would facilitate the general concept now.
You could manually move older content over or alternatively script something to check the date stamps based on the current date, but I’d just manually move some media over to test it out really. Though I probably won’t get an invite for a while, because I don’t have Amazon Drive currently (and answered that on the beta invite section) and as you get the first 3 months free, there’s not really any point in creating an account now, until you intend and are able to test/use it properly.
I’m a bit unclear why you’d want to schedule uploading older files and leave newer ones locally?
I like the idea itself but what I’d be more interested in personally is to keep what I watched locally and remotely in sync (which coincidentally, I just submitted a feature request for).
In your case, you could upload all your data and when you are ready to “archive”, you just delete it from your local server and still maintain your history.
Hi. Well, I think the concept is to have a full-featured PMS running in the cloud (thus, no hardware cost, no specifications hassle, no uptime and accessibility troubles, and no headache), not a backup solution. At some point, your local PMS will be secondary, as you store more and more content in ACD over time.
Nonetheless, I must admit, I want to see some kind of media auto-upload in the future, like Camera Upload, but server-to-server. However, IMHO library migration/sync and the proper backup management are way more important right now.
The presence of your ACD subscription (paid or trial) is irrelevant at this point. Just sign up for the beta asap, there’re known cases when people get their invitation without an ACD altogether as it was stated in their application form.
@i1u2smile said:
I’m a bit unclear why you’d want to schedule uploading older files and leave newer ones locally?
I like the idea itself but what I’d be more interested in personally is to keep what I watched locally and remotely in sync (which coincidentally, I just submitted a feature request for).
In your case, you could upload all your data and when you are ready to “archive”, you just delete it from your local server and still maintain your history.
Or did I miss the gist of your idea?
More of a general example, but mainly the idea of doing that would be to maintain free space for newer content on a Plex Media Server that provides a library to clients with a local network, while moving older content i.e stuff already watched to the “archive” without having to invest more in additional physical disks, unless you really wanted to increase overall capacity locally. My thoughts are simply, at some point a home storage solution (unless your rocking some serious enterprise gear) will have a max storage capacity, limited by one or more factors. The point being with a cloud archive, once you hit that storage capacity, you move the data off, so its not “deleted” but no longer exists locally.
Being able to keep the watch data/history despite being moved/deleted would be a nice idea, I agree.
Hi. Well, I think the concept is to have a full-featured PMS running in the cloud (thus, no hardware cost, no specifications hassle, no uptime and accessibility troubles, and no headache), not a backup solution. At some point, your local PMS will be secondary, as you store more and more content in ACD over time.
Nonetheless, I must admit, I want to see some kind of media auto-upload in the future, like Camera Upload, but server-to-server. However, IMHO library migration/sync and the proper backup management are way more important right now.
The presence of your ACD subscription (paid or trial) is irrelevant at this point. Just sigh up for the beta asap, there’re known cases when people get their invitation without an ACD altogether as it was stated in their application form.
Indeed. Maybe the Cloud will reverse the priority one day, but I can see the internet connection being the main factor that prevents that currently. While in the UK (where I am from) there are various high speed broadband packages available, the upload speeds are miserable. For example, for a 100 MB package (12.5/MBs) on a well known ISP here, would mean just over 1 MB/s upload speed, that’s a 10:1 ratio. Not ideal. I already struggle to get content backed up to CrashPlan for off-site backup, because my uplink is capped at about 630KB/s. Fun!
I requested an invite on day zero, so I’ll await for an email if I’m chosen, I still won’t sign up for ACD for now, the 3 months trial is something I’d like to maximise.
I like the idea of keeping the local and the cloud in sync.
When I watch something in my home, I would be using my local network. When I travel, I would not be tied up by my upload speed.
Upload speed would only be an issue in initially populating the cloud. It would take a while.
Some ISPs have data caps. So using the local PMS would be better when at home.
What would really be nice is if the local and PMS synced AND it didn’t have to show up as a separate PMS. The player would determine where to get the file from. PMS already know when it is being accessed locally or remotely.
@jamesmacwhite
Interesting. I don’t consider myself a heavy cloud user, but I already find cloud drives/off-site backups a viable solution, as long as my service provider is reliable. Here in Russia I get a symmetric 100 Mb/s internet connection, so I finished uploading my entire 1.5 TB media library to ACD in a few days. Then again, it’s my ISP/location factor. Maybe one day every ISP out there realizes uploading is as essential as downloading in the cloud age.
On the other hand, my CrashPlan subscription, while being unlimited as well, hardly pays off. It’s not just you — I don’t even have a terabyte of data there — I had to select only the essential folders to backup, so painful the process is. Yes, the continuous backup and versioning are cool and that thing saved me life a couple of times, but the speeds are meh and the UI/restoring workflow are horrible. Plus, no public APIs for their services, so no 3rd party (hopefully better) client. But that’s just CrashPlan cutting down on costs.
I’m satisfied with ACD for now, be it media library hosting, all-purpose remote drive or file-sharing platform. I only hope the prices won’t jump with all that unlimitedness.
